Here is a summary of the most prominent Cybersecurity stories making the headlines over the past week or so.
Patch Tuesday, July 14 2020
Microsoft issued a large set of fixes in it’s updates this Patch Tuesday – a total of 123 vulnerabilities, of which 18 were critical in Hyper-V, DNS Server, PerformancePoint, SharePoint Server, Office, Outlook and Remote Desktop.
There were a higher-than-usual number of remote code exploits.
The details of the security updates can be found here.
Twitter Hack, July 15/16 2020
Twitter said a “coordinated social engineering attack” on employees was to blame for the hack of prominent accounts such as those of Joe Biden, Obama, Elon Musk and more.
A bitcoin scam used these accounts to post tweets such as “I am doubling all payments sent to my BTC address for the next 30 minutes. You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000”. DM’s and other data of some accounts was also accessed. Verified accounts temporarily lost the ability to Tweet as well as perform some account changes.
We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2020
The head of Twitter, @jack, later said Twitter felt ‘terrible’ about the situation.
Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.
— jack (@jack) July 16, 2020
We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.
💙 to our teammates working hard to make this right.
UK Bans Huawei from 5G infrastructure
In a blow to already tense relations between the West and China, the UK government announced a U-turn, by banning Huawei from 5G all-together in the UK. This comes as the US continued to apply pressure on the UK to do so, as well as a new NCSC report. However, there are some concerns that this decision was politically motivated. It is expected that the Chinese government may retaliate.
No-Log VPN Services: User Data Exposed
Seven VPN services that claimed they do not store user logs, have had user data leaked.
All of the services are based in Hong Kong. Researchers at Comparitech found an unprotected database containing 1.2TB of data.
127 Home Routers Affected by Critical Vulnerabilities
A German security study has found critical vulnerabilities in routers by Asus, D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, TP-Link, AVM, and ZyXel.
Out of the 127 routers, 46 routers had not received a single security update in the last year, while 22 had not acquired any in the previous two years.
Android Phones sold under federal-backed program came with malware
Malware has been found pre-installed on budget phones sold under the Lifeline Assistance program in the US.
Affected devices: ANSUL40,U683CLThe malware is said to be present in the system apps “Settings” and “Wireless Update”
com.android.settings – Trojan (App name: Settings)
com.fota.wirelessupdate – variants of Android/PUP.Riskware.Autoins.Fota detected (.INS, .fscbv, and .fbcv) (App name: WirelessUpdate).
The malware cannot be uninstalled easily.
That concludes this Security Roundup, covering approximately the last 7 days of security news.
Takeaways:
– It is recommended you apply this months Patch Tuesday updates for Windows as they cover a large number of vulnerabilities.
– Social engineering attacks are still a prominent attack vector, as shown by the Twitter attack.
– There is growing concern about the security of Huawei 5G infrastructure – but the company may also be used as a political chess piece between China and some Western nations.
– When picking a VPN service, ensure they are reputable, especially free services.
– Check your routers and if possible, apply any patches.
– Be careful when purchasing budget technology and always consider security when doing so.